The Ancient Enemy (24 page)

They found no survivors in Hurves, just a pile of heads: mots, chooks, and brilbies. The indiscriminate slaughter of everyone and every animal was terrifying.

They went on, searching. One of the mors from Bilauk started to talk, but what she said was gibberish, and after a while Nuza had to hold the mor in her arms and gentle her as she broke into wild screams and bouts of tears.

When at last she was calmed again, they went on up through the Rinon country, over the Slem Pike toward Harfield. They reached Harfield, a medium-sized place, about an hour before dusk.

The folk of Harfield, gathered in the taproom at the Swinging Door, would not believe them.

First off they thought it was all a sick joke.

"I see through you," said Mers Sachwan, the tavern owner. "You think to get a rise out of us, have us all running around like chooks scared silly by the wolves!"

The regulars at the bar were laughing along, secure in the impossibility of what the strangers were claiming.

"No, you have to listen to us. Listen to old Haloiko, he was there."

"It's true, they are men, and they killed everyone in Bilauk. In Hurves, too. They might come here tomorrow."

It then turned out that two fishing boats from Harfield had disappeared in the previous two days, though the weather had been fine, with little wind or rain.

Toshak shook his head grimly at the news.

"I'm calling for volunteers. We need to get as many mots as we can who can shoot. And we need to warn everyone, get them at least to prepare themselves to flee quickly as the need arises."

"Now you're panicmongering," said the tavern owner. "You better stop it before we call on Giffiam, he's the town constable here."

"You carry on like that, and you will end up in the lockup, just you see," added Mers Sachwan.

For a long moment they stared at each other. Toshak looked over to Nuza and Thru. Valuable time was being wasted.

Suddenly Thru drew his sword and brought it up under the throat of the plump old barkeep.

"Listen to Toshak, old mot. This is no stupid game. We need to talk to the constable all right, and he needs to understand what is happening. Otherwise, everyone in this village will die tomorrow, most likely, and there'll be nothing here but a pile of heads down by the jetty."

"You've gone mad."

"If I've gone mad, then I've gone mad along with quite a bit of company. Old Haloiko lived through it; he says they were men. They are like us, but larger. Isn't that the sign of Man? They are men, and they are coming here and they will kill you."

Mers was speechless. So were the others. This had gone way past a joke.

"You're serious," said Jebedel Muri.

"We are," said Toshak. "We have to organize some defense for the town and prepare everyone for instant flight."

The mots in the Swinging Door looked at the members of the troupe, plus old Haloiko and the mute mor.

"What about her?"

"She came from Bilauk, too."

"That's Denssi Orill," said Haloiko.

"She cannot make sense," said Nuza.

Denssi just stared at them all with wide, frightened eyes.

"They kill!" she said at last in a strangled voice.

Now Mers was backed up against the big barrel, with only one decision to make.

"We'd better call Giffiam, don't you think?"

A few minutes later, the constable had emerged from his smithy and was listening intently.

As with the mots of the tavern taproom, he had a hard time at first accepting any of their tale. The news brought by this Toshak, the famous swordsmot, seemed completely crazy, but the others all said it was true. And there was old Haloiko, who was from Bilauk, and who claimed to have seen men.

Men?

Giffiam decided that, as constable, he had to do something.

"Toshak, your fame has preceded you to Creton, but still you must realize that this news you bring us is hard to accept. But I will call the muster, and we will put this to the folk."

Giffiam turned to the door where his assistant lurked.

"Marsh, make a fire."

"Yes, Constable," said young Marsh.

Within a few minutes Marsh had assembled sticks and straw from the tavern's wood crib and got a blaze started.

Across from the Swinging Door Tavern stood a bakery and a dry goods store. In front of the bakery was a platform erected for the town crier, who broadcast any dramatic news from its eminence of two feet.

Dusk was falling as Giffiam mounted the town crier's stand and blew the ancient Constable's Trumpet. It had been years since the brass trumpet had been heard in the village, not since a posse had been called out to chase some bandits on the run from the coal towns. Four mots charged with highway robbery had eventually been caught and sentenced on that occasion, twenty years before.

Giffiam was a little rusty with the instrument, and his first efforts sounded more like a chook in terrible pain than anything else. But eventually he got his lips around it and the trumpet responded with a long clear peal. Heads popped out of doors up and down the narrow streets. They saw the glow of a fire in the village center and soon a crowd had gathered.

Giffiam got up and gave the warning, as he understood it.

The crowd became agitated as they heard the news of the massacres, and cries of astonishment and alarm rose up.

"What we gonna doo!" cried a chook sitting up on the low roof of the Swinging Door.

"That's a good question," said Giffiam. "For an answer, I'm going to hand over to Toshak of Sulmo, the famous sword-fighter, who brought this news today. He has some ideas."

Toshak got up and let them all take a look at him for a few moments. He gave off an aura of capable decisiveness. The sword and fighting knife in his belt were very obvious to them all.

"I saw the ruins of Bilauk and Hurves. The attackers left nothing but the heads of the folk behind. This is truth. We must prepare to fight to save the village. I think that the men come very early in the morning. Probably before dawn. They surprise the villages and catch everyone in their beds.

"So we must build barricades tonight. We must arm every mot who can fight, and prepare everyone else for flight in the morning. We will send the mors and children inland, to the coal towns."

"And if you're wrong about this, we're going to beat you black-and-blue tomorrow and send you on your way," said a mean-spirited brilby named Uank.

Voices shouted disagreement with Uank, who was not popular in Harfield.

"Don't listen to that idiot," said Giffiam. "But how can you be sure the raiders will come here tomorrow?"

"I cannot be absolutely certain. Perhaps they will not—but the consequences for you all if they do come and you are not prepared are too terrible to ignore."

They were staring at him, trying to make up their minds. Some were convinced, a few were openly unconvinced.

"Listen to me. They have attacked Bilauk and Hurve. You saw the smoke of Hurves, didn't you?"

A few nodded. Indeed, they had wondered about that column of distant smoke.

"All we found of the folk of those places was a pile of heads and old Haloiko there. He saw them. Big noses, beards, and hair. They are men!"

The mots looked at each other in wonder and fear. What the hell was happening in the world? First two boats had gone missing, inexplicable in terms of the weather. And now these tales of villages burned, people slaughtered, and Man the Cruel coming back to do it. It was a terrifying thought, but still a few were not convinced.

Then old Haloiko got up and told them what he'd seen.

When he was done, Giffiam asked for a show of hands and found overwhelming support for building barricades and setting a defensive watch. All the mors and children would be ready to leave at a moment's notice. Chooks and donkeys would go, too.

"Everyone should get their bow, and their best points. I'd suggest sword and knife as well. If you have spears or shields, bring them. We will need all the best weapons in the village."

Mots scrambled in all directions.

Hob joined a gang of big brilbies and set to building the barricades. For raw material they brought out timber from the sawmill and some heavy farm carts which they turned on their sides. Other folk brought down anything that might be useful, old barrels and broken doors, window frames and wheels. Soon the streets leading into the village were blocked at the edges with big piles of wood, wheels, and motley stuff.

Meanwhile the mots who were good with the bow had gathered near the Swinging Door to hammer out a strategy. Toshak was the only one among them who had studied warfare. He emphasized the value of making their shooting count.

"Don't waste your steel points on long shots. Don't shoot until they are close enough for you to choose a soft spot. The second thing is how we make use of the available cover."

They made a tour of the three main barricades and noted likely places for bowmots to shelter while still keeping a good field of fire.

An inventory of arrows and points was made and the handiest mots gathered in the smithy to fletch as many shafts as they could. Steel points were dug out of every keeping place.

Toshak examined the weapons available. There were a few war spears, ancient things unused in hundreds of years. The shafts were mostly worthless and had to be replaced. There were some hunting javelins, small versions of the long spear thrown by the pyluk, and even an old pyluk spear itself, taken from a lone marauder decades before. That, too, had long since gone punky and was useless.

There were more swords, many more. Usually the family blade, handed down for untold generations. They were made of good steel, with decorated handles and protective steel box for the hand, but most needed sharpening, and few mots had much knowledge of swordfighting.

Beyond that were long knives, which were pretty universal among the mots of the world, axes, of which they had seventy good ones, and a few with fractured handles.

The village turned out to work for its own defense. The smithy was running all night, the glow from his hearth visible in the darkness.

The constable sent out small parties of scouts to the nearest headland. They carried pinecones soaked in pitch that they could light to give warning.

Dawn came with nothing but the mournful croaking of a few chooks without sleep. The wind had died down, and the scene took on an absolute kind of peace and silence.

The village stood down, and went about its business.

Everyone was exhausted after a night of such tension, but the village life resumed its pace. Everyone had work to do. As they hurried about the polder and field, meeting in the lanes or back in the village they exchanged jokes and wry comments. "A wild sheep ride, that was!" was the general feeling.

"Sometimes I think we can be convinced of any fool thing that comes down the pike," said old Huhumpa, and there was quite a lot of agreement with him.

Toshak withdrew into himself. Thru and Nuza sat together in the taproom of the Swinging Door. They talked drowsily for a while and then slept there, heads back against the wall.

About noon there was another blast on the trumpet from Giffiam, and everyone rushed from the fields to the village to hear.

They found Giffiam, flanked by Toshak and Uls and Fel Diljer, who had hiked down to Hurves at first light and were just returned.

"It is true," said Fel Diljer. "The village of Hurves is burned to the ground. There is only a pile of heads on the wharf, no other trace of the folk. They killed the entire village."

"You're sure?" said someone in the crowd.

"I scouted all around the village. There's no one there."

The jokes were finished. Most folk did not return to the fields, but instead went to help improve the barricades.

Toshak had studied them, and had had them moved and rebuilt. All three were now situated between stone walls of sizable homes on either side. The houses were also barricaded and made fast against assault. The walls would tend to compact an attacking force and bunch them up so they would be more vulnerable to stones and arrows.

All that day a party of mors and children had worked at finding and bringing up good stones for slinging. They also had heavier rocks, hauled up by donkey cart and piled up ready to be used.

As the afternoon wore on, new scouting parties were sent out to relieve the first ones, who had returned with no reports of anything out of the ordinary.

But Hurves had indeed burned. A couple of the most recalcitrant mots who refused to believe even Fel Diljer had gone down there in person and returned to confirm that it was gone, village and villagers alike.

After that everyone worked with even more determination. A group of mors started cooking up a mess of clams and bushpod cakes. Mussels were raked up and set to boil. All the chooks in the village were sent inland, since they moved too slowly over distance to wait until an emergency.

At the end of the day of hard work the villagers ate and settled down for the night. A watch was put at every barricade and from the top of the dry goods store's roof, which had the best view out to sea in the village.

At midnight the moon rose, close to full in a sky with clouds blowing up from the south.

Soon afterward, there was a light flaring on the southern headland.

"A light!"

The village awoke.

Everyone stared off into the south, and waited.

Time passed, the wind picked up again so that small surf started beating on the beach.

Eventually they heard someone hallooing from the southern road. One of the lookouts from the south. He'd come to report that it'd been a mistake. They'd thought they'd seen something out at sea, perhaps a sail, but it would have been too big. Then they thought their eyes had been playing tricks on them. It had been way out, at the edge of visibility. But whatever it was had gone and not been seen again. They thought now that it was an illusion.

There was a collective sigh of relief. A fire was lit and water boiled to make guezme tea. Several mots retired to bed.

"Wake me if anything happens," they said to one and all.